Day 203: House Cleaning, Good Tunes & Eying the Cat’s Eye

Another glorious day to sleep in. I extended my sleep until 10:30 this morning! The sun was creeping into my room. Gratitude. I smiled at the beautiful good fortune of a sunny waking. I snugged with my kitties before rousing and climbing out of my comfy sleep nest.

I woke up refreshed and happy. I fed the kitties, made gluten-free waffles for breakfast, emptied the dishwaher and then got to work. I pulled out some CDs to play while I cleaned: Indigo Girls self-titled album with their break-out single Closer to Fine, the powerful Kid Fears (which includes a cameo by Michael Stipe of REM), and one of my favorites and lesser known IG songs, History of Us; Sinead O’Connor‘s classic I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got album, with some of my favorite songs including Nothing Compares 2 U, Jump in the River, Three Babies and Black Boys on Mopeds; Tori Amos’s album Scarlet’s Walk, which features the ultra cool song A Sorta Fairytale (which is her most played song, to date), the folky Wednesday, the bluesy Your Cloud, and the upbeat Taxi Ride; and then finally Eddie Vedder’sInto the WildSoundtrack, which is an amazing collection of sweeping and emotive accoustic delights. I especially love his prolific and generous sound on Hard Sun. Eddie Vedder on accoustic equates to sheer brilliance.

I scrubbed down the kitchen. There’s something about house cleaning that’s euphoric, relaxing and cleansing. Next, I vacuumed downstairs, then up the stairs (which was a killer workout, as I was bent over working the crap out of my abs, using a special feature of my super sucker vacuum cleaner), I vacuumed upstairs, which nearly gave me a hernia. Next, I changed my sheets, washed my woolen afghan, and then got dressed and hustled over to Safeway for my weekly groceries, dropping off two full trashbags at the dumpster on my way out. Suffice it to say, I got a lot done today.

When I got home, I put everything away in the kitchen and read a little more of Unpredictable. I turned on the television and watched Maid in Manhattan, the movie starring Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes. I actually liked J-Lo in this film, but I thought Fiennes was awkward, at best. They didn’t make a convincing couple, they lacked chemistry. She carried the movie. I found out this movie was written by John Hughes, which seemed odd. I had dancing visions of rebellious Judd Nelson and puffy mouthed pinked out Molly Ringwald… Anyway. Natasha Richardson was very good as the annoying socialite. And J-Lo’s son in the film was a total cutie patootie. It’s not a great film, but it was moderately enjoyable. I also have PMS and could be easily fooled by my hormone-induced emotions. That is entirely possible, plausible and probable.

I was going to go to 5:00 p.m. Mass tonight followed by dinner at gluten-free savvy Andina, but I had a change in plans. I ended up on the phone with my mother for a long time and then my kitty, Capri, had a problem with her eye. She couldn’t open it up and it was getting watery. I tried to gently pry it open and the inner layers of skin were covering most of her eyeball, it was freaky. I left her alone. It seemed like she accidentally scratched her eye when she was cleaning herself. I didn’t panic and decided to keep an eye on her. I didn’t want to leave her, so no church and no gluten-free Peruvian delights for dinner.

So, I made myself a beautiful salad for dinner with mixed greens, yellow grape tomatoes, red onion, shaved carrots, yellow and orange sweet peppers, jumbo shrimp, and a lite mango dressing, topped with red pepper flakes. I had Whole Food’s gluten-free sour dough bread heated with a curl of butter. I had a small glass of organic Italian soda in Blood Orange, which was delicious. I finished with a couple of gluten-free chocolate chip cookies and a cup of Yogi Vanilla Hazelnut tea.

By the time I finished dinner, Capri’s eye was open again. But, it was clearly still bothering her. It didn’t look like I would need to take her to the vet. Still, I’m keeping an eye on her eye.